


Now There's Not a Trace of Light

by orphan_account



Series: The Cipher Twins [3]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe, Angst, Animal Death, Dark Character, Demonic Possession, Demons, Gen, Human Bill Cipher, Mind Meld, Multiple Personalities, One Shot, POV Alternating, dream demon pines twins, i don't know how to tag this stuff man, i probably like this au too much, sort of, sort of i mean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2014-10-02
Packaged: 2018-02-19 14:35:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2391911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone knew that everyone knew that something was extremely wrong with Mabel and Dipper Pines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now There's Not a Trace of Light

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song 'Last Holiday' by MezzoMestizo. And I am getting way too into this 'naming fics with song lyrics' thing tbh.

Everyone knew that everyone knew that something was extremely wrong with Mabel and Dipper Pines. About three weeks after the fiasco of a puppet show the girl had put on, the two of them started wearing matching suits for three days, and always talked at the same time.

The end of those three days saw them sort of back to normal, and sort of more unnerving than before, with matching outfits that mirrored the ones they used to be recognizable by, and the newly found talent of being able to guess what people's dreams were about. And that boy Robbie would swear by his life, if one was to ask him, that he saw them lighting napkins on fire in the diner with their bare hands. Of course, no one talked about it, except Robbie because that boy never knew when it was time to shut up and hope for the best.

Other than him, though, no one talked about it, and many people didn't even fully consciously acknowledge it. But everyone noticed it. Something was wrong with the Pines twins. The only thing was, no two people had the same idea about _what_.

 

=·=·=·=·=·=·=

 

Stan noticed the changes to the twins' clothes as soon as they came back downstairs from the attic after their weird fainting spell. He was glad the suits were gone, and that the kids were apparently back to some semblance of normal, but the yellow triangles on both their clothes looked vaguely familiar.

"You kids aren't 'going gothic' or whatever that is, right?" He asked.

"No." Both twins replied, and said nothing else.

"Good." Stan felt a shiver go up his spine, and he steadfastly ignored it. Dipper and Mabel would be back to normal in no time, he told himself. And until then, he'd just stay quiet and leave them to their own devices.

That didn't stop him from feeling like a rabbit sharing space with wolves every time the twins so much as walked into a room.

 

=·=·=·=·=·=·=

 

            Something was going on with those weird little city brats. Robbie had _seen_ them setting napkins on fire with their bare hands, and normal—or even semi-normal—twelve year olds didn’t do that. No matter who he told, though, they shook their heads and told him he must have imagined it. That seemed to just be Gravity Falls’ default reaction to the strange phenomena that plagued it; Robbie had noticed that no matter what happened or what people saw, it could always be shut down and ignored so long as no major destruction came out of it. And sometimes even when major destruction _did_ come out of it.

            “You wanna make a deal?” The twins asked, standing over where he was sitting on the curb. Robbie blinked at them.

            “We want you to stop spreading rumors about us.” Mabel continued.

            “Yeah, no thanks, kid.” Robbie replied.

            “Come on, Robbie.” Dipper grinned. “We’d owe you one; isn’t there anything in town you want?”

            “Not really.” He stood up abruptly, and the kids stumbled backwards to avoid him crashing into them. He stuck his hands in his pockets and walked away, ignoring the feeling of their eyes on him.

            Robbie researched everything he could. He came to the conclusion pretty quickly that the Pines twins were demons, between the fire and the whole contract thing, but beyond that there wasn’t much to go on. He was determined to get proof, to show everyone that the twins were evil, or at least inhuman. To make everyone admit that the town was as weird as everyone (silently) knew it was. He just wasn’t sure how he was going to achieve that.

 

=·=·=·=·=·=·=

 

Wendy wasn't sure what was going on with Dipper and Mabel. But she _was_ sure that it wasn't good, and at least sixty-two percent sure that it had something to do with the supernatural of Gravity Falls. Or at least some secret society or something, seeing as the yellow triangles on their clothes seemed like they could be a symbol or logo for something. So Wendy went on what would prove to be a long and mostly-fruitless search of answers.

She ran into Soos, snooping through the Mystery Shack, but neither of them found anything. After the Shack provided nothing helpful, she took an extra half hour on her lunch break to go to the library, but she couldn't find anything about the triangle or personality changes like the twins’ or secret societies or _anything else helpful at all, damn it._ Of course, one shelf she skipped entirely, because Robbie was there flipping through books and muttering to himself about demons.

After a week, Soos pulled her aside and told her about his and the kids’ past encounter with Bill-the-yellow-triangle-guy. This provided a new road for her search, but proved to not be all that helpful in the long run, because no one knew anything about ‘Bill Cipher’. Well, not that they would tell her, anyway. Wendy _knew_ a few people knew _something_ , the way they blanched at the name was evidence enough, but no one would say a single word.

            Every place in town was at some point turned upside down by Wendy’s quest, (which was sometimes also Soos’ quest) but nothing relevant ever came up anywhere. Once nearly a month had gone by without change, and without success, she steeled herself for what she knew was inevitable if she was ever going to get answers.

            “Where _are_ you?” She muttered, standing on tiptoe to see the top of the bookshelf. Dipper and Mabel were out in the woods, where they tended to spend most of their time not spent in the attic, nowadays, so Wendy had taken the opportunity to sneak into their room and look for The Journal, as she’d mentally dubbed it. (Yes, the capitals were necessary.) She knew that the book would have answers, if she could just _find_ the damn thing. Getting down on all fours so she could check under the twins’ beds, Wendy pulled the journal out with a quiet yet triumphant “hah!” and stood up, facing the window so that the fading sunlight outside would provide more light to better see the pages by.

            “Nowhere else in town has anything useful for me, so you’d better have some answers.” Wendy told the book threateningly. Uncertain of what all she should be looking for, she flipped through the pages as quickly as she could, trying to spot something useful. She took pictures on her cell phone of the few pages with Bill Cipher on them, hoping that she could look at them more once she wasn’t somewhere she shouldn’t be. Then she flipped to the next page, but there was nothing else about Bill in the journal. There were only the few pages she’d already photographed, which didn’t even have so much real information as warnings against any interaction with Cipher ever. “Come on, that can’t be it! Don’t you have anything else helpful?”

            “Who are you talking to?” The twins’ voices came from right behind her, dripping with artificial cordiality. Wendy jumped, and bit her tongue to avoid yelping in surprise as she turned around, moving the hand holding the journal around behind her back as she did.

            “No one. I was just up here...uh--” Wendy started, but she wasn’t sure she could come up with any excuse that Mabel and Dipper wouldn’t see through immediately. Well, half a truth was better than nothing, she decided. “I came up here to read the journal.” She admitted, handing it over to them. “There’s been a lot of weird bugs at home, but the last few days I’ve started to think maybe they’re pixies or something, so I thought I’d come up here to see if the journal had anything about them.”

            “Why didn’t you just ask us?” Dipper asked, and he sounded hurt by the fact that she hadn’t come to them, enough that Wendy almost felt bad before she caught the glint of amusement in the kids’ eyes.

            “I dunno,” Wendy shrugged, trying her best to look apologetic. “I guess I just didn’t want to bug you guys with something so small. I mean, you’ve fought zombies and stuff, pixies didn’t seem like a big enough deal to bother you dudes with while you were busy.”

            “You’d be surprised.” Mabel replied. “Pixies can be dangerous.”

            “Yeah, that’s what the book said.” Wendy lied easily. “Anyway, sorry for going through your stuff, man. I’ll just go, now.”

            She hurried out of the room and down the stairs, and she could feel the twins’ eyes on her the entire way. Wendy shuddered.

            The next day, and the one after that, and every one after that, every time they were in the same room Wendy felt like they were watching her, even when they weren’t even looking in her direction.

            She felt like she was in the sights of a sniper out of an action movie; it made her skin crawl, how much suspicion she was getting from the twins. And the feeling never went away.

 

=·=·=·=·=·=·=

 

Tia Julia had told him when he was younger, when a dog had tried to bite him, _"Animals are most of the time more dangerous than you, sobrino. But they only attack when they think you are a threat. So if you think you won't walk away from an attack, first thing you do is make sure you are not a threat."_

Soos decided quickly that speaking up would make him a threat, and he had no doubt whatever his friends had turned into wouldn't hesitate to bite. So he tried to find something to do to turn them back from whatever they were now, and he somewhat reluctantly told Wendy what he knew when she asked after a week of frantic searching, and he didn't say anything else. Silence, cowardly as it seemed, kept him from being perceived as a danger; it kept him safe.

Mentally thanking his Tia Julia for her advice became a common occurrence, especially when the twins started watching Wendy like hawks after she tried to read the journal. Wendy had made herself a threat, and if she wasn’t careful, Soos knew his friend would end up getting bitten. He also knew that he had to stay out of the twins’ sights until he knew how to fix them.

So Soos didn't say anything when he noticed the suits, he didn't say anything when he noticed a familiar yellow triangle on the clothes that _replaced_ the suits, he didn’t say anything when Wendy had a spotlight on her, and he didn't say anything when he found a dead vole in the woods behind the shack with all its teeth missing, and a bunch of tiny teeth turned up two hours later sewn onto a dream catcher that'd been hung over the gift shop door.

He didn’t say anything at all.

 

=·=·=·=·=·=·=

 

            _They all know._ Mabel thought. Well, not Mabel exactly; since the three of them had gotten their minds all squished together, it was ridiculous to try and differentiate between the individuals that used to exist. But sometimes little things came to the forefront that were more one person than the other two, so they called themselves by whatever name—or names—seemed most relevant at the time. Right now, the bits of them that used to be Bill were for the most part staying back, so they were currently as much Dipper and Mabel as they were ever going to be again.

            _They all know something. None of them knows everything._ What was left of Dipper responded silently. _And we know none of them will ever talk._

 _Except maybe Robbie._ The thoughts that were once Mabel said.

            _Except maybe Robbie._ Dipper’s echo agreed. It-that-used-to-be-Bill became more prevalent, and they balanced the three of themselves between their two bodies easily.

            _We can take care of him easily, if we need to._ They thought, not maliciously so much as dismissively. They’d done it before, after all, to humans much more powerful and knowledgeable than a teen with minor anger issues. They’d erased memories, altered personalities…they’d even gotten rid of a few humans that became too irksome.

            They glanced toward the journal, lost in a memory for a moment, then shook themselves out of it and grinned.

            _He’ll definitely be less troublesome to take care of than the last one._


End file.
